Dead Ringer
by ncfan
Summary: Cornelia sees a ghost. Post-series.


In Ohgi and Villetta's wedding shot there was a girl down in the lower right hand corner who looked startlingly like Euphemia. I can't help but wonder what sort of effect that would have on Cornelia. This can be considered a spiritual successor to _when things burn_.

I own nothing.

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><p>The moment Cornelia lays eyes on the girl and really drinks in her appearance, her reaction is perhaps understandable. First, there is a double-take so hard and fast that it nearly gives her whiplash; Cornelia winces but doesn't rub her neck, breeding taking over. Then it sinks in and the sweltering summer doesn't feel quite so sweltering. After a moment of wearing a slightly slackened face and having both Cécile and Guilford raise an eyebrow at her, Cornelia recovers her composure and manages to behave as though it never happened. If she seems a bit distracted afterwards everyone either doesn't notice or tactfully ignores it.<p>

It's probably a good thing the pictures are all taken right after the ceremony is concluded. The photographer's had the sense not to wait until bride, groom and guests are all too wasted to stand (the ones old enough to drink, anyway, and even among the underage the ones who don't think to sneak wine off the table), so while everyone is a bit impatient to get to the food and yes, the liquor, at least they're still sober.

For the sake of keeping the peace, the factions that were formerly at each other's throat at least once in the past have been politely ignoring each other today—for the most part, everyone keeps to their own groups, apart from going up to congratulate Ohgi and Villetta, which ends up being done en masse. Afterwards, even though everything is outwardly friendly a trained eye can tell that the lines are splitting a little bit. Cornelia steps forward to give her congratulations and takes advantage of the way everyone's ignoring everyone else to go sit on a low brick wall under a tree and snap her fan open and closed abstractedly.

After so long it still aches dully and the girl's all too familiar face is a thorn digging into Cornelia's side. No, she doesn't look exactly like Euphemia—her hair's a bit shorter and her face is wider, her eyes closer to blue than Euphemia's were. So much is the same aside from that; her hair is the same shade of bubblegum pink and she wears it nearly the same way, she has the same smile and the same laugh, the same air of fresh innocence about her. Alright, so maybe Euphemia wasn't the most innocent girl in the world—she _was _a member of the royal family, after all—but she was incredibly innocent and naïve compared to most of her siblings and it reflects on this girl just the same.

Cornelia had avoided having to look at Euphemia's body, and had not attended her funeral. In her defense, the latter didn't occur until after she'd gone AWOL trying to discover the origin and nature of Geass, so attending Euphemia's funeral back on the mainland would have led to a _lot_ of awkward questions that Cornelia didn't want to answer. Still, she'd avoided all mention of her sister after she had died and had never went to view Euphemia's corpse. If Cornelia saw Euphemia dead then it would all become real and that, that was too terrible for words.

Of course, eventually Cornelia had to face it. Euphemia was dead. She had taken leave of her senses—_had to have been drugged, or poisoned or something_—had attempted to massacre the Elevens at the SAZ and had been gunned down. Nothing was going to change that no matter how much Cornelia wanted it to.

After a few hours of essentially going out of her mind and clicking 'off', Cornelia came back to herself and ordered a swift and brutal suppression of the Black Rebellion. If they thought they could kill her beloved sister and get away with it, the rebels had another thing coming.

It was discovering that Zero was her supposedly dead brother Lelouch and the subsequent revelations imparted via Kururugi Suzaku that had driven Cornelia to drop everything and leave to gather more information about Geass. Cornelia had somehow managed to divert all thoughts of Euphemia and have those very thoughts consumed by her the whole time, up until the time she came upon the base of the Geass cult and was finally able to have some measure of retribution for her sister's death. It wasn't perfect and it wouldn't clear Euphemia's name, but it was something.

Cornelia's eyes narrow against the sun as she watches the girl. She's sitting alongside several of the students invited, crowded on a stone bench. They're having some sort of animated, rowdy conversation—the sort of thing you expect a bunch of teenagers to be indulging in, especially at an event like this; the simple happiness of a wedding must seem so cathartic to them after the strain of the past few months.

_Euphie's name still hasn't been cleared, but Lelouch managed to overshadow her so much in terms of atrocities that it might not even be necessary anymore. _To Cornelia, it will _always_ be her dearest wish to have Euphemia's name officially cleared, to have everyone know exactly how a sweet little girl was manipulated and forced into committing an act so alien to her nature. However, everyone seems to have either forgotten or has just decided that Euphemia's massacre of the SAZ so pales in comparison to the acts of slaughter committed by Lelouch that it doesn't rate anymore. However much she hates to admit it, Cornelia suspects that trying to bring this forward once more might only shine the spotlight on Euphemia's acts once more and bring the hatred of her back to a fever pitch. No one's willing to do that to their baby sister.

So Cornelia is stuck biting her tongue to keep from provoking the widespread hatred of the populace concerning her sister and staring at a school girl who looks entirely too much like her for comfort or ease. The frustration galls and the memories ache.

The girl leans forward in her seat and cranes her head to talk to and laugh with the blonde girl—a curtain of light pink hair partially obscures her face at this angle but Cornelia can make out the lips curling in a wide, generous smile and Cornelia just stares at her, frown deepening and eyes growing more glazed with each passing moment.

_This must be the universe's idea of a bad joke._

"Here." Cornelia takes the proffered glass in silence and nods as Guilford sits down beside her. Over time, whether by accident or design he's been getting increasingly proficient at interrupting Cornelia when she's brooding. It's becoming more and more noticeable and Cornelia doesn't know whether to find it endearing or annoying. For right now, she remains undecided.

Cornelia lifts the glass to her lips, glad to have something to drink, and is met with a nasty surprise, nearly gagging on the burning liquid within. "What is this?" she chokes out, glaring at Guilford, who doesn't seem to like it any more than she does. "It's vile!"

"I have no idea," Guilford replies, grimacing and squinting at the glass in his hand. "It was just what was on the table."

Shaking her head, Cornelia tips the contents of the glass over the wall behind her, not caring terribly if anyone sees; after a moment's ginger hesitation, Guilford does the same, albeit considerably more surreptitiously than Cornelia. At this point it probably isn't going to cause all that much of a scandal if two Britannian officials are caught tipping their well nigh undrinkable alcohol into the shrubbery. Everybody else is either too absorbed in something else to notice or too drunk themselves to care.

Inevitably, Cornelia's eyes are drawn back to the girl who looks achingly like her dead sister, still chattering away with her friends, unaware of the woman on the stone wall who's staring at her like she's some sort of ghost. Zhou Xianglin passes by and nods briefly to Cornelia, who returns the gesture in kind, significantly more mechanically. Her eyes never touch on the Chinese aide; they remain trained intently on the laughing girl.

_I've changed my mind. It's not a bad joke; it's a sick one. _One finger runs up and down the spine of the fan gripped in her hands, harder every time. _A sick joke that takes everything that's ever been lost and throws it back in my face. _Cornelia restrains the urge to sigh deeply. _And if I forget for even a moment it's like I'm seeing her again. Is it any wonder why I have little patience for humor?_

"You've seen her?" Cornelia is drawn from her staring by Guilford's question and she can see that he has followed her gaze, with a slight frown and a furrowed brow. "I will admit," he remarks quietly, "that the resemblance she bears Princess Euphemia is nothing short of uncanny."

Cornelia's gaze grows sharp and intent. "Do you know who she is?"

Cornelia can pick up on Guilford's face some reflection of her own conflicted emotions, though considerably less intense—there is absent sadness, guilt and regret written there in faded ink. "No, your Highness. She came with one of the students. Given how young she looks I assumed she was a student herself."

"So did I."

The already oppressive heat seems to encroach even more on Cornelia's skin as she continues to watch the girl who is all but a doppelganger of her dead sister. Sometimes in the past she wondered whether or not it was possible to see ghosts in the face of the living like everyone always said it was and now she has her answer—there is definitely a ghost sitting on that bench, giggling a joke told by a dark-haired boy and yelping as a sudden sharp wind blows through her hair. There is without a doubt an echo of Euphie in a light brown dress, blissfully free of the fate that befell the last girl to wear the face that she does now.

Teeth clench and Cornelia wonders if her lungs are empty or if she's trying not to howl.

One of the boys hanging around the bench steps forward and motions to his friends. "I'm hungry; let's go get something to eat." The rest of the cluster all seem to agree that this is a good idea and rise from the bench and the ground around the bench, setting off towards the table laden down with food.

In the process of getting up, the girl finally realizes that she's being watched.

As she walks by, the girl makes eye contact with Cornelia and nods, smiling a shy, tentative smile before catching up with her group.

Euphemia never smiled like that, at least not at Cornelia. Euphemia might have been occasionally shy or tentative around her sister but when she did so she didn't feel the need to smile to cover it up. When Euphemia smiled, she smiled out of joy.

Cornelia returns the gesture—there's little to smile fully about—and the spell is broken. She's finally able to tear her gaze away.

_Not a ghost; just a girl_, she tells herself. There's no need to stare anymore.


End file.
